


Stones

by geekprincess26



Series: Steel [3]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Arranged Marriage, Drama, F/M, Friendship, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-03 18:11:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8724892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geekprincess26/pseuds/geekprincess26
Summary: Conspiring to send secret missives from the house of one's host was rude, and throwing pebbles was downright unladylike.  Sansa did not care.





	

That night, for the first time in her life, Sansa thanked the heavens for her nightmares, for it was the dreams that awoke her, shaking and covered with sweat, and sent her dashing to the double windows across from her bed. She threw them open to cool herself, but a warm breeze flowed in through the window instead of the stiff northern wind Sansa, in her half-awake state, had expected. What she would not have given for a proper blast of northern air, she thought, twirling one of the curtains to fan herself, not to mention that it would mean she was back in Winterfell with Bran –

“Bran!” Her brother’s name flew out of her mouth more loudly than she had intended, and two of her maids came flying into the room, along with Lucas Mazin, who was one of the three men Jon had assigned before their journey South to guard Sansa exclusively. Sansa reassured them that she was well and merely wished to rise early. She waited until all of them had exited her room before donning a robe, lighting a lamp, setting it on the table in her solar, and retrieving her writing supplies from one of her trunks. She mixed the ink, all the while calling herself a hundred variations of idiot for not beginning to write the letter the moment she had arrived in her apartments the prior evening, and smoothed out the paper on the table’s surface before dipping the quill into the inkpot.

_Brother,_ she wrote before another round of self-cursing ensued. Of course Bran should learn about her impending marriage to Jon from her own hand before he received Daenerys’s raven if at all possible, but a letter confirming such important news should certainly be written by both her hand and Jon’s, in order to ease Bran’s mind and those of the lords around him about any possibility of forgery or duress. Moreover, they would need to write at least one additional copy of the letter, and probably two, to be carried by different ravens in the event that any misfortune should befall one of the others.

Sansa sent one of the maids scurrying down the stairs to have Jon fetched from his quarters, then turned with a sigh to let the others dress her and braid her hair for the day. She and Jon would have to work quickly, after all, if their ravens were to leave the Red Keep before any that the dragon queen might send to Bran. As the maids laced her kirtle and entwined her braids, she silently composed a dozen different introductory sentences for her letter, none of them satisfactory, and when she sat at the table, fully dressed, to try her hand at more, she tried a dozen more, again without success.

Since she was alone in the solar, Sansa let a heavy sigh escape her lips. It was impossible, of course, to tell Bran of her upcoming marriage without surprising him, but she wished to believe it was still possible to convey the news without shocking him enough to send him into another spell of night terrors such as the ones he had suffered at intervals since his return to Winterfell from the far north just under two years ago. He had been unconscious and sick nearly to the point of death for his first three days there after arriving in the arms of a wearied and wind-burnt Howland Reed, but on the fourth morning he had awakened, and he and Lord Reed had related to a stunned Sansa and Jon the story of Eddard Stark’s encounter with his dying sister at the Tower of Joy. That night, Bran’s terrors had begun. Jon had stalked off to the godswood after Bran, having related his tale, had flatly refused to take Jon’s place as King in the North, and he had remained there for a good portion of the night. That had left Sansa, who had fallen asleep in the large chair by Bran’s bedside, to awaken to an empty bed and the sound of crying, which had brought her bursting into the hallway to find her brother dragging himself down the hall by his arms. Once the maester had arrived and Bran had been awakened, along with half the castle, Bran had tried to assuage her fears by telling her of the Three-Eyed Raven’s warning that he might reasonably expect such things to happen while still trying to master his greensight.

“Don’t worry too much, Sansa,” he’d said, nudging her shoulder with his own as they sat on the edge of his bed together. “It’s not as if I can actually walk around the halls, and do any real damage.”

“Not funny, Brandon,” she had retorted, using his full name for the first time in at least seven years, and Bran had actually grinned at her. However, the terrors, as he had predicted, had continued to trouble him at every so often, and they had always grown worse during times of great difficulty or change. Four of his manservants – two at a time for four hours each – were always stationed next to his bed every night during one of the terrors’ bad streaks; for, as Sansa had quickly discovered, it took only one to lift him back into bed if he managed to get out, but both to awaken him if he began screaming, as he often did, and restrain his arms’ thrashing while he regained consciousness. For two months after Bran had returned from beyond the Wall, and then again for another three months after the White Walkers’ defeat, he had both crawled and screamed each night. He had borne his terrors with twice the dry humor and good grace that could be expected of any lad his age, but by the end of each stretch of months, he had grown dark circles under his eyes that would not disappear even at the height of the day, and he had lost so much weight that the maester had nearly had to force-feed him.

Bran’s bad spells had taken their toll on Jon and Sansa as well, for each of them had always awakened every other hour to check on him and, in the case of whomever was awake exactly four hours after he had gone to bed, to oversee the new pair of manservants taking over the watch for the remainder of the night. Furthermore, Jon had taken over management of the council meetings Bran had missed due to the maester’s strict orders that the young King make up for his lost sleep during the days. He and Sansa together had ensured that ravens were received, petitions heard, and ledgers read during Bran’s absences, which had only increased after Bran had discovered that hours, even overnight stays, in the godswood did more to alleviate his symptoms than any tea or medicine the maester could brew. But now Jon was not at Winterfell, and neither was Sansa, and as much as she trusted Lord Davos and Lord Manderly, whom they had all agreed would aid Bran in managing the castle’s affairs if Bran should need any assistance, she still worried about his health should the news of his sister’s involuntary marriage to his cousin trouble his mind enough to bring on more of the terrors.

So engrossed was Sansa in her thoughts that she did not hear the door to her apartments open. When Jon spoke her name from just a few feet behind her chair, she jumped up and whirled around so quickly that, had she been holding her quill in her hand then, she surely would have dropped it and caused it to stain more than just her paper.

Jon stepped a few paces back. “Sorry,” he said.

“No, that’s all right,” Sansa replied once her heart had begun to descend from her throat. “I did ask you to come, after all, and I’m sorry to wake you, but thank you anyway.”

Jon shook his head. “I was awake already," he answered.

Sansa sat down, and Jon followed her lead. “Are you all still well enough?” he asked, and Sansa nodded and shifted her chair almost imperceptibly toward her inkpot, which was situated at the end of the table opposite from Jon.

“I thought we should send Bran a raven about all of this as quickly as we can,” she said, “so that it gets to Winterfell before the raven your aunt sends.”

Jon nodded at once. “Of course,” he said, looking slightly sheepish. “I had thought of it last night, but it slipped my mind after I awoke.”

Sansa shook her head. “I should have thought of it before,” she replied. “But I thought to make it as short as we can for now so that our ravens will fly more quickly and so we can copy it enough times. We could send a longer letter later, written in our encryption, that would include instructions for Lord Manderly and Lord Davos about the councils and the – the marriage preparations, just in case Bran has his terrors again and needs to go to the godswood.”

Jon nodded slowly. “It’s a good plan,” he said. He and Sansa turned then to the papers set out on Sansa’s table. They spent the next hour and a quarter composing and copying their brief missive to Bran. Sansa, to whom Jon usually deferred when wording letters about particularly personal matters, composed most of the message with some input from Jon within the first half-hour. Between them, they remembered to include instructions for Bran to pass on their greetings to Lady Manderly – a reference to Sansa’s direwolf, Lady, which was one of the terms the three had agreed to include in all of their letters to each other – as well as to should have the servants begin preparing three dozen barrels of Winterfell’s finest blackberry mead and six dozen white roses for the wedding ceremony. The mention of the number three before the number six signified the three living and three gone of the six children raised by Eddard and Catelyn Stark in Winterfell, and together with the reference to Lady would assure Bran that the message was genuine.

Once the message had been composed, Sansa and Jon spent the remaining time copying her draft three times in their best imitations of scribes’ writing, one for each raven. Finally, all three letters were finished and imprinted with the seals of Houses Stark and Targaryen, and Sansa and Jon silently headed for the rookery. They reached it during the gray period before dawn and stood at the battlements of the tower atop which it was perched until their three ravens had disappeared into the distance.

“Will you breakfast now?” Jon asked her on their way down the fifteen flights of stairs that separated the top of the tower from the floor that held the household’s breakfast rooms, and Sansa nodded. The Red Keep boasted twenty times the occupants at any given time that Winterfell did, and at least twice again as much noise, which meant that after two days there, she had already learned to value the relative quiet of the early morning hours. So had Jon, who accompanied her in silence. The thought occurred to Sansa, who had almost forgotten about the events of the prior nights in her focus on finishing Bran’s message with Jon, that beginning in just a few weeks, they must descend the steps at Winterfell together every morning from the upstairs hall that contained the lord’s and lady’s chambers. She paused for half a second so that she fell a good pace behind Jon for the lion’s share of the way to the lower halls.

Then another thought made her stride to catch up with him on the last staircase. “Jon,” she said, “should we not meet in my solar again after breakfast to write again to Bran?”

Jon tilted his head. “Yes, I suppose so,” he replied and reached up to rub the back of his neck. “It will take long enough to get through the last bit, at least on my part.”

Sansa knew that it would indeed take long enough for them to both compose and encrypt their message, but she shook her head anyway. “Better that,” she said, “than another private audience with your aunt.”

Jon began to grimace, but stopped midway. “Let her try to have one, then,” he said. “We are working on matters of state and cannot be disturbed.”

Sansa had seen that gleam in his eyes on the rare occasions when Bran had convinced Jon to join himself and Sansa at dice games or chess in one of their solars and inform some particularly annoying lord or other that the three of them were engaged in important matters of state and could not see him. A chuckle burst out of her before she could stop it, although she did manage to muffle it with one hand.

“So we are,” she said, and one corner of Jon’s mouth twisted upward as they took the last few steps.

However, no sooner had they entered the breakfast room than two of the lords from the Stormlands contingent that had arrived just the prior day asked to speak to Jon. The three men ended up seating themselves two tables over from Sansa, who had waved Jon off before he could so much as begin to ask if she preferred he stay with her; for, after all, Lucas Mazin was only a few yards away. She had only gotten halfway through her second scone, however, when she looked up to see the queen and Tyrion Lannister approaching her table. Tyrion, after the greetings had been exchanged, asked politely if they could join her, and Sansa assented just as politely, although the servants were already sweeping in her direction with platters of food. No sooner had they finished serving Daenerys and Tyrion than the queen immediately began to discuss plans for Sansa and Jon’s betrothal feast, which she had scheduled for seven days hence. Sansa saw Jon stand to leave his own table and managed to slide him an apologetic look. He nodded but raised his eyebrows just high enough for Sansa not to mistake the look, and Sansa responded with an almost imperceptible shake of the head. Jon nodded again and turned to depart with the Stormlands lords, and Sansa thanked the heavens that he had been able to escape the room. If he had not, Sansa thought, he might have excused himself to ride Rhaegal again had he heard the queen casually asking her Hand how many bottles of strawberry wine could be had at a week’s notice. As it was, Sansa spent the next hour and a half forcing herself to assure the queen that, even though the strawberry wine was now out of season, they could make up any lack of it with the in-season blackberry and raspberry wines, which the guests would surely enjoy just as much as they would the strawberry vintage; that Northern boar meat could complement pigeon and rice if seasoned correctly; and that any baker who could construct a six-foot-tall cake in the shape of a dragon could surely make a shorter one in the shape of a direwolf.

By the time the servants had removed her dishes, Sansa felt the beginnings of a searing headache. She stood up with a mind to make for her solar and some tea and Bran’s letter, but Tyrion stopped her on her way out of the room and asked to speak to her privately. Much as Sansa wished not to, she assented. For one thing, potentially refusing meetings with both the queen and her Hand would raise all the wrong questions; and for another, Sansa would far rather deal with the latter than the former at the moment, despite her trepidation at the possible directions their conversation might take. After all, she had not spoken to Tyrion at any particular length – save for their discussions about battles and strategies at their war councils with Jon and the queen, during the White Walkers’ invasion – since her flight from King’s Landing so many years ago.

Soon Sansa found herself wandering through the palace gardens with Tyrion and their guards – one of the Hand’s personal servants from Casterly Rock, one from the queen’s household, and young Rodrik Hornwood, who had taken over Sansa’s guard duty for the day from Lucas Mazin. Tyrion managed to find one of the few paths she had not taken through the gardens during her previous time at the Red Keep, for which Sansa was grateful. She was even more grateful when she discovered that their current path led over a granite bridge that spanned a lovely lily pond and glimmered black and silver in the morning sunlight.

Tyrion – for Sansa could not think of him as her husband, even former husband – stopped in the middle of the bridge and dragged himself atop a ledge that sat perhaps two feet up the wall and was flanked by two wide, curved slabs. Sansa had to examine it more closely before she realized that the side of the bridge jutted out for perhaps another two feet above the ledge to form a bench built into the bridge wall itself. She did not sit, however. Instead, she rested her elbows on top of the wall and stared at the lilies bobbing in their pads. Tyrion stood up on the seat of the bench, taking care not to step on the pile of pebbles that sat against its back – no doubt the work of some bored grounds servant or the mischievous son of one of the castle’s inhabitants or visitors – and imitated her gesture. He glanced quickly to his left, and Sansa saw a smaller pile of pebbles resting against his left elbow.

“Lady Stark,” he said, “I once told myself that you might survive us Lannisters yet, and here you are.” That made Sansa surprised enough to turn and meet his eyes, and they crinkled as he grinned at her, and she noticed how many new wrinkles time, battle, and more wine had added to his face since she had last looked upon it, back when she had been his wife.

“If I were as much a gambling man as I am a drinking man,” Tyrion continued, “I would say you owe me a glass of wine for proving me right.”

“And any gambling man in Westeros would have called you a drunken fool for saying it in the first place,” retorted Sansa. She bit the tip of her tongue to contain her tone but did not apologize.

Tyrion looked closely at her for a moment, then turned and picked a dull white pebble off the top of the rail. “Let them stop at drunken, and they would be correct,” he said, “but no more am I a fool than my father was humble or my nephew sane.” He squinted into the distance for some time before flinging the stone out over the water, where it landed neatly between two lily pads and disappeared from sight. Sansa watched the ripples spread to within a yard or two of the bridge before petering out.

“Target practice,” said Tyrion as he chose another pebble, for Sansa had turned to raise her eyebrow at him. “It keeps my aim sharp if I’m in a tight corner and have to make do for something to throw, even if it’s only a wine goblet.” He winked as the pebble landed squarely in the center of a lily pad that had been floating a little more freely than the others.

“You should have brought wine goblets, then,” answered Sansa, who had turned to watch the stone’s flight, but already her voice had lost its edge.

Tyrion tut-tutted at her as he tiptoed to reach a third pebble. “Lady Sansa,” he gasped in mock reproach, “if you think me such a strong and well-prepared warrior, have you not heard that my lack of exploits on the battlefield is matched only by the number and greatness of my exploits off of it? My friends are of far greater use to me on the battlefield than I to them. In an ale house, however – ” He heaved the pebble to his greatest distance yet, then turned to raise an imaginary wine glass to Sansa.

For a moment, Sansa remembered Tyrion saluting her in a similar way, back in their chambers when she had been his terrified young bride and he the drunken groom who had refused to bed her. The memory, which had caused her to cringe so many times, now brought a small smile to her lips. Before she was aware of it, she had stooped to pick up a pebble off the surface of the bench. She squinted at a group of pads a few yards away and aimed her pebble carefully before tossing it a foot wide of her mark.

Sansa grimaced and turned to see Tyrion laughing beside her, but she merely stooped again to pick up two more pebbles. She held one out to him, and he nodded his thanks to her. He threw first, but this time Sansa threw farther. Tyrion grinned as if he had not had this much fun since his last visit to an alehouse.

“You must have had a good master teaching you to throw your daggers,” he remarked as he reached for yet another pebble. “You made your adjustment quickly.” Sansa merely nodded, but she shifted her gaze in Tyrion’s direction when she sensed him halt his next throw.

“I should have thought to have you taught to wield some sort of weapon myself, Lady Stark,” he said, his Lannister blue eyes boring into her own. “But I made a mistake I do not often make: I underestimated your willingness to fight if given a weapon. For that, I make my apology.”

It took a few moments for Sansa to narrow her widened eyes back to their normal state. Once she had, Tyrion tossed his pebble half-heartedly, and both of them heard the distinctive plop of it hitting the water only a few feet away from them.

“I realize, of course,” Tyrion continued, “that it is an odd mistake to apologize for of the many I made on your behalf. I might have been expected, for instance, to lead by asking your forgiveness for marrying you without your consent, even at my father’s behest – ” he grabbed a particularly large stone before Sansa had realized he had done so, and heaved it with unusual vigor straight into the middle of one of the smaller lily pads, making it sink at once – “or for failing to protect you from him, or my nephew, or my sister, or every other member of my entire damned family.” He sank yet another pad with yet another of the larger stones and paused to wipe his forehead with his sleeve. “Or, perhaps, for being half-wit enough to ignore you to the point where I, with all of my efforts to protect you, pushed you further into my sister’s cage.” He rested his chin on the railing and stared downstream to where the lily pads all blended into a haze of green against the sky, and sighed. Sansa in turn stared at him.

“Ironic, isn’t it?” Tyrion continued. “The cruelty of my family did more to prepare you for life outside the Red Keep than my feeble attempts at compassion ever did. Had I seen the wisdom of using those feeble attempts to prepare you more kindly than did my monster father or my mad nephew or any of the rest of them, you may not have fallen in with the other monsters.” He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly before continuing. “Had it not been for my folly, perhaps you would have been able to avoid the things that befell you later, and that is one of the larger regrets of my life, such as a man like me can afford to have them.”

Sansa finally turned to face him in full then. “You and I both know you are capable of feeling honest regrets, Tyrion,” she said softly. Her tongue surprised her by leaving out his title. “If you were not capable of it, you would not have had an annulment petition smuggled to the High Septon before you left Westeros.” That drew Tyrion’s eyes to hers abruptly, although the surprise left them after a few moments.

“Nor do you believe any more than I do,” Sansa continued, “that your family’s monstrosities were better for me than your kindnesses. If I did not learn from either until much later on, it was my own fault. You had no part in it except that your mad nephew pointed to you right before the death he richly deserved and made you a prisoner so that I was left without your protection. By different logic, one could say that I was the guiltier of us because you accidentally left me to fall in with monsters, but I deliberately left you with them in prison and at court while I fled the Landing.” She picked up another especially large stone and flung it as far as she could in her turn.

“It was the best thing you could have done by far, Lady Sansa,” said Tyrion, and Sansa had to turn her head because his voice had lowered so. The wrinkles around his eyes had deepened even more in the high morning sun, and so had the wrinkles around his mouth. They made his expression look mournful, and Sansa was mildly surprised to see the same twinge of sorrow reflected in his eyes. He seemed unwilling to speak further, so she replied softly, “I know,” and turned to face the water again.

“Believe me or not, I still felt guilty over it after I left,” she admitted, “especially when I heard you had been sentenced to die, and then later on – once I realized just how much you had protected me from when I was too stupid to be properly grateful for it.” She turned to look him square in the eyes again. “I appreciate your kindness now more than I ever did before. You were my truest friend in King’s Landing – whether or not you can afford to regret it.”

Tyrion’s mournful gaze softened just a bit. “That says all one ever need know about the Landing, if I was the truest friend you knew there,” he replied. Sansa shrugged in agreement.

“Still,” she said, “I am sorry, Tyrion. I am sorry that I did not realize how true a friend and protector you were to me, and I am sorry that I treated you with less gratefulness than you deserved.”

The sadness and crinkles returned to Tyrion’s face, and he shook his head. “No, let me have the regrets this time, since we have agreed I can afford them,” he replied. “I was not as true a protector as I should have been, and you deserved a better friend and certainly a better husband.”

His gaze grew softer, and she recognized the look he gave her then. It was the same look he had given her in the throne room of the Red Keep, when he had helped her up after stopping Ser Meryn Trant from beating her; the same look he had given her again in her chambers not long before their wedding, when he had assured her he would never harm her; the same look he had given her when they were alone in the same chambers on their wedding night, when he had promised never to share her bed without her consent.

Sansa nodded tightly and tossed another pebble into the water as Tyrion continued. “Now comes a regret I truly cannot afford to have,” he said, “which is to regret of boasting that I have the gift of being an excellent judge of humans. For instance, I understand that my queen is a bit on the stubborn side.” He ignored the look Sansa gave him as he tossed his own pebble into the stream immediately after hers.

“I know,” he continued, “that her methods run on the, shall we say, blunt and ham-fisted side of things, and I assure you that they often drive me to drink. In fact, after she disregarded my advice to give you and Lord Snow a bit more time and – temperance – before ordering you about into the sept, or in this case godswood, I drank perhaps the most I have drunk since the day you and I entered the sept together. That having been said, she has in spite of herself given you a better man than any I have met in my lifetime, save perhaps for your father.”

Sansa snapped her head around to face Tyrion in spite of herself at the mention of her father. Tyrion, however, merely nodded. “I spent some months with him when he first went to the Wall, just after you left Winterfell,” he told her, “and although he was only a boy, he was a thousand times nobler than my own nephews even then. The times I have spent with him during and after our battles have proven him just as noble, even more so, and time has given him a certain wisdom and humility he lacked back then.” The wrinkles came back to his face, but this time his lips were turned upward instead of down, and his whole face softened.

“What he does not lack,” Tyron said, “is kindness and gentleness, and if I know him at all, I know he will be at his kindest and gentlest when he is with you. He will do you far more good than I ever did.” He held Sansa’s gaze for a few moments, then bent slowly to retrieve a sparkling gray pebble from the seat of the bench. He took his time aiming it just so before he threw it into the water, but when he turned back to Sansa, he was grinning.

“If I may be so bold,” he remarked, his tone much more lighthearted, “I think as well that you will be good for him. You may pull him out of those brooding spells of his from time to time.” He winked at her before leisurely tossing another pebble into the stream.

“Of course,” he said the stone finished its lazy arc out over the water, “you can always sheep-shift my bed if he proves me wrong.”

Sansa closed her eyes and blushed at the memory. When she turned to look at Tyrion again, she matched his smile for a moment. Then a cloud passed over the sun, and she turned her face upwards to regard it. She was thankful it had come along just then, for several moments passed before she felt it safe to regard Tyrion once more.

“But,” the Hand continued gaily, “I have the utmost faith that he will not. In fact – again, if I were a wagering man – I should feel quite confident in wagering an entire case of Her Grace’s not-yet-acquired strawberry wine on it, and a dozen casks of Dornish Red besides.” He sighed and bowed dramatically, then clambered off the bench.

“Off to procuring more yet-to-be-procured goods, I suppose,” Tyrion said, which made Sansa’s lips twitch upward again. He offered Sansa his arm, which she automatically took. When they reached the end of the bridge, he bowed again.

“Chin up, Lady Stark,” he said. “You survived us, as I said you would. If you and your lord are not careful, one of these days you may be in great danger of thriving as well.” He turned, leaving a speechless Sansa in his wake, and clapped in the direction of the servants who had accompanied them.

“Ser Delyn! Ser Toros!” he exclaimed, and his guards stepped smartly to his side. “I believe this fine day calls for some wine back at the Keep, do you not agree?”

**Author's Note:**

> Tyrion Lannister was wickedly fun to write. I hope that you enjoyed him, along with the rest of this chapter! As always, please feel more than free to leave a comment or two on what you did or didn't enjoy. I'm still trying to figure this whole fic-writing thing out, and feedback really helps me to hone my craft.


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